2026 Requirements
The rules are narrow, the topic space is wide. HIR scores submissions against a published 12-category rubric (60 points total) and reserves the right to invite finalists to a virtual Defense Day with a 15-minute presentation and oral defense.
| Eligibility | Grades 7-12 globally. US students include all states, DC, territories, and US citizens or lawful permanent residents overseas. International students submit in English with traditional American spelling. |
| Junior Division | Grades 7-8. Single prompt, "Inventions that Changed How We Live." |
| Senior Themes | Global Culture in the Digital Era; Security in a Multipolar World; Technology, Innovation, and Power. Selected prompt must be noted at the top. |
| Format | Short-form analytical article, 800 to 1,200 words, hyperlink citations, AP/HIR style, formal prose, global perspective, thesis without agenda. |
| Finalist Stage | Virtual HIR Defense Day, 15-minute presentation plus oral defense to HIR judges. |
| Cost & Mechanics | Registration and payment required before submission. Submitted via the official HIR contest portal. |
AI Policy, Read This First
HIR states that ChatGPT and other AI tools are strictly prohibited for contestant article writing. Use this brief for planning, source strategy, rubric calibration, and independent coaching. Do not use it, or any LLM, to generate or rewrite a submission. Defense Day is built to expose ghostwritten work.
What Past Winners Do
Specific geography wins attention
Winning titles avoid "the world" as a vague canvas. They name a region, city, sea, river basin, corridor, market, or community, then connect it to global stakes.
Familiar issue, unfamiliar angle
Cybercrime as a borderless industry. Sand cartels. Marine genetic resources. Urban fertility pressure. Digital ocean sovereignty. Food-system monetization by armed actors.
Technology as power, not gadget
AI, biometrics, undersea cables, smart cities, drones, data sovereignty, and health technology recur because they naturally create international winners, losers, and governance gaps.
Policy texture matters
Medal titles imply institutions, incentives, legal structures, markets, or infrastructure. A purely moral argument reads like an op-ed, which the contest explicitly rejects.
Theme Mix in Gold-Medal Titles
Distribution of recurring themes across the parsed gold-medal title set (253 titles, 2021-2025).
Recent Gold-Title Signals
A sample of recent gold titles. Read these as topic-framing prompts, not as templates to imitate.
Example Winning Essays
HIR linked these gold-medal essays from its public Spring 2022 winner page. Spring 2022 is currently the only contest cycle for which HIR posts direct essay links. Use these for comparative reading: how each title narrows the topic, signals global relevance, and sets up analysis rather than advocacy. Do not paraphrase or imitate.
| Medal | Title and Author | Why it’s a useful model | Cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Bilge Dumping, The Environmental Disaster Going on Behind Closed Doors Heidi Pan, Wardlaw Hartridge School |
An overlooked maritime practice reframed as an international governance problem. Strong example of "name the system, then show its rules." | Spring 2022 |
| Gold | The Most Important Plant You Overlooked, Seaweed Zunian Luo, Weston High School |
The "small object, large system" move. A specific resource carries arguments about food, climate, and economic stakes. | Spring 2022 |
| Gold | Waning Wheat, Why Egypt’s Deteriorating Agricultural Resources Crumbled Under the Russia-Ukraine War Autumn Wang, Wuhan San New School |
Connects a regional food-security case to geopolitical shock and supply-chain dependence. Useful pattern for Security in a Multipolar World. | Spring 2022 |
| Gold | Three Ways Technology Ecosystem Expansion Can Recover Africa’s Economy Sally Shin, Hamilton High School |
A multi-part analytical frame for a topic that spans business, development, and technology. Watch how the three "ways" stay parallel. | Spring 2022 |
| Gold | Racist Robots? Why AI Bias is a Serious Global Concern Nancy Huang, Shenzhen College of International Education |
A technology topic kept globally specific without collapsing into a generic "AI is dangerous" essay. | Spring 2022 |
| Gold | The Third Pillar Underneath a Stable Indo-Pacific Jiarui Wu, Hwa Chong Institution, Singapore |
A security essay that makes a narrow strategic claim while still speaking to regional order. | Spring 2022 |
| Gold | Restricting Reproductive Rights, China’s New Three-Child Policy Ke Ni, Hangzhou Foreign Languages School CAL Center |
A domestic policy treated as an international affairs question through demographic and economic spillovers. Note the restraint on advocacy. | Spring 2022 |
| Gold | Less is More, How the Degrowth Movement Can Lead to the Growth of Humanity Jiansheng Zhang, United World College of South East Asia |
Treats a contested intellectual movement analytically: defines it, traces incentives, weighs counterarguments. Strong opener for the Technology, Innovation, and Power theme. | Spring 2022 |
Links are author-name PDFs hosted on Google Drive by HIR. They open as Drive previews. If a link ever fails, the canonical winner page is hir.harvard.edu/hir-writing-contest-spring22.
Use rule. Read for structural and sourcing patterns. HIR prohibits AI-generated contestant writing, and students should not imitate or paraphrase a winning essay.
Winning Profile
To score at the top, the article has to behave like published analysis. The strongest submission is a balanced analytical article on an underappreciated international issue. It has a thesis, but not an agenda. It uses evidence to explain why a problem is emerging, why common interpretations miss something, and what tradeoffs shape the path forward.
| Test | What the judges are checking |
|---|---|
| Topic | Can the student explain why this issue matters internationally, why it is undercovered, and why this theme is the right lens? |
| Evidence | Can every factual claim be traced to a reliable hyperlinked source, with sources varied enough to support real analysis? |
| Nuance | Does the article explain at least two sides of the issue without collapsing into "good actors versus bad actors"? |
| Defense | Can the student defend source choices, counterarguments, and why the topic belongs in international affairs at Defense Day? |
| Style | Formal prose, AP/HIR style, no advocacy language, no first-person op-ed register. |
Article Blueprint, 800 to 1,200 Words
- Hook and stakes. Open with a precise moment, data point, contradiction, or policy change that reveals the issue.
- Thesis. State the analytical claim, not a recommendation-heavy opinion. The thesis should explain a cause, consequence, or tension.
- Context. Give enough historical, geographic, and institutional background for a reader to understand why the issue exists now.
- Mechanism. Show how the system works: incentives, actors, technology, markets, law, infrastructure, or culture.
- Complication. Add counterevidence, competing interests, regional differences, or unintended consequences.
- Global significance. Tie the case back to international affairs and the selected theme.
- Ending. Close with the unresolved stakes, not a speech. HIR wants analysis more than advocacy.
Four-Week Sprint
| Week 1 | Topic mining. Generate candidate topics from current international affairs, then reject anything too US-centered, too broad, too covered, or too opinion-driven. |
| Week 2 | Source dossier. Build a source map: international organizations, government reports, academic work, reputable journalism, and local or regional sources where appropriate. |
| Week 3 | Draft and structure. Write independently, keep claims citation-ready, and check every paragraph for a clear topic sentence and transition. |
| Week 4 | Rubric audit. Score against all 12 rubric categories, line edit for AP/HIR style, and prepare a Defense Day explanation of thesis, evidence, and limitations. |
Coach’s Note
Pick a topic the judges will not have read about ten times this cycle. Then make sure every paragraph carries either a fresh source, a fresh actor, or a fresh mechanism. The cleanest signal of a winning HIR article is that an outside reader, halfway through, says "I did not know this." Save advocacy for elsewhere. The contest rewards explanation.
Primary Source Trail
| Source | What it covers |
|---|---|
| HIR Academic Writing Contest, official page | Eligibility, themes, deadlines, registration mechanics. |
| HIR Contest Submission Guide | Submission rules, formatting, the 12-category rubric. |
| Spring 2022 medal winners (with linked gold essays) | Only cycle with public direct-link gold essays. Source for all eight Examples above. |
| Spring 2025 medal winners | Names, schools, titles only. Useful for current topic-cluster analysis. |
| Summer 2025 medal winners | Names, schools, titles only. |
| Fall/Winter 2025 medal winners | Names, schools, titles only. |